There are three new videos from Rational Support that have been published to IBM Education Assistant and YouTube. Below is a list of helpful videos for Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) and Rational Licensing.

There are new videos available covering licensing topics for Rational products. One of the videos covers how to change the port for the Rational License Key Server. Another covers how to install Rational License Key Server on UNIX and Linux in console mode. The other covers upgrading the Administration and Reporting Tool for Rational License Key Server to a new fix pack. All of these videos are available on the IBM Rational User Education YouTube channel. Thank you to support engineers Shijesh Velayudhan, Nikhil Bhat, and Sombir Yadav for creating the videos.

IBM Rational Synergy is a task-based, software configuration management (SCM) solution that brings together global, distributed development teams on a unified platform. Rational Synergy provides capabilities that help software and systems development teams work and collaborate faster and easier.

Rational Synergy is licensed using IBM Rational Common Licensing. For information about Rational Common Licensing, see the Rational Common Licensing information center.

Rational Synergy supports the Floating, Named-User Floating, and Token license types. For a description of license types, see “License type definitions” in the Rational Common Licensing information center.

For Rational Synergy users, the login name is seen as the user of the token license. To reserve Named-User licenses for specific users, see “Setting up the options file” in the Rational Common Licensing information center. When configuring the options file for Rational Synergy and Rational Change, it is not necessary to put the default administrative users (ccm_root, ChangeAdmin, and csuser) in the INCLUDE list. The license file includes additional floating licenses for these users. Do not assign these licenses to other users because the products might fail.

How licensing works with Rational Synergy:

When you start Rational Synergy, it contacts the License Manager to request a license. Rational Synergy uses information that was provided during the server installation process to find the License Manager. The following example describes how licenses are configured during installation. The example assumes IBM Rational Common Licensing was installed before installing Rational Synergy.

-> When you install the Rational Synergy server, you are prompted for the host name and port number of the license manager. The information is recorded in the $CCM_HOME/etc/system_info.txt file.

-> When the Rational Synergy router process is started, it reads the license information from the $CCM_HOME/etc/system_info.txt file.

-> When a Rational Synergy session is started, the information about where to find the license manager is passed from the router to the Rational Synergy server. The Rational Synergy server also looks in the TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE or LM_LICENSE_FILE system environment variables. If these variables exist, the values override the value in the $CCM_HOME/etc/system_info.txt file.

The Rational Synergy server contacts the license manager using the specified host and port, and requests a license on behalf of the user. The $CCM_HOME/etc/system_info.txt file or TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE or LM_LICENSE_FILE system environment variable stores the location of the license server. The location is specified as port@license-server-name, that is, the port and computer on which the license manager is installed. The location can also contain a comma-separated list of three port@host specifiers denoting a three-server redundant configuration. For example, port1@host1,port2@host2,port3@host3 specifies a three-server redundant configuration with servers on host1, host2, and host3.

Rational Synergy searches for license servers and license files in the following order:

The environment variable TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE.

The registry entry for TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE.

The environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE.

The registry entry for LM_LICENSE_FILE.

The location specified by the contents of $CCM_HOME/etc/system_info.txt.

If you move the license manager to a different system, you must edit the $CCM_HOME/etc/system_info.txt file or update the TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE or LM_LICENSE_FILE system environment variable to contain the new value.

Operations that consume Synergy license:

Starting a session does not consume a license. Only operations that update the underlying database consume a license, such as file check out, task creation, task completion, and so on.

Synergy license timeout

After a license is consumed by a user, that license is reserved for that user for 60 minutes after the last database update while the session is running. If the user exits the session, the license is released immediately.

License usage during integration:

Some Rational Synergy integrations hold a license for the duration of time the user is running the integration. Source-code related operations performed through the integration can then be updated in the database. In this case, the user can exit the visible session, but the integration is still running a session behind the scenes on behalf of the user

There is a 30 minute minimum use time when Rational Change checks out a license. When a license is checked out, it stays checked out for at least 30 minutes, whether there is activity from the user. If the user exits or is inactive after that, the license is released.